Hutcheson Swiss Pairs

I played the Hutcheson Swiss Pairs with Martin Stephens on Saturday. Hutcheson's Grammar is a school in the South Side of Glasgow that teaches its pupils bridge - several of them were competing in the competition. The event was well-organised by John Di Mambro and Avril Sloane. Martin and I did mostly sensible things (with a few exceptions), and this was enough for 3rd place, with 83 VPs. The pair that won it, Nigel Guthrie and his partner (whose name I'm afraid I don't know...) had 76 VPs with two rounds to go, so we weren't even close to victory, despite winning 5 out of our 6 matches. 

Cliff Gillis and Helen Kane, who finished 2nd, won all 6 of their matches, including beating the leaders 16-4 (might have been 15-5), but the leader's strong performance in the first four rounds gave them too much of a lead.

Here's a hand where I bid badly, giving Martin an awkward decision at the 4 level:

My 4H bid is poor. As we noted in the discussion afterwards, the opponents are pretty much always about to bid 4S, so what I should be doing here is making my partner's decision at the 5 level easier. A fit jump of 4C best describes my hand here, and should usually help Martin to make the right decision over that.

Martin chose to double, and we only managed to get 300 out of this, for very nearly a cold bottom - basically no-one else in the room had been forced to decide at the 4 level, and those that did might have defended more carefully to take 500 and a top.